One of the most important parts of a successful marriage is ensuring both partners are pointing in the same direction. This means you must share common goals. This doesn’t mean you will agree on everything, but at the end of the day, there needs to be some commonality. For example, if one partner wants to live in Alaska and the other wants to live in Miami and both are dead set on it, it would be very tough to overcome.
Couples must sit down regularly to ensure their goals are aligning. Where to live is obviously a very important common goal. This is also one where compromise is possible. In the example above, if the couple is truly in love then they could spend part of their time in Alaska and part of their time in Miami. Of course, work and kids could compliment that arrangement, so finding a common and mutual goal is important.
Another very important common is goal surrounds children. Do you want kids? How many? Who will care for the kids? Will someone stay home? Can you afford kids. This discussion should occur before you ever say I do and both partners should be in agreement. This is no an area where one partner should try to coerce the other. Of course, attitudes can change over time, so if that happens, its best to talk about it and see if a new and improved common goal arounds kids can be reached. This topic is particularly important for couples on a 2nd or 3rd marriage where there are kids from previous relationships. Obviously, at this time, whether to have kids has already been decided. But, both partners must understand the other partners responsibilities with their kids and both partners must agree on how various aspects of co-parenting will occur. If you can decide these items ahead of time, it saves a lot of grief. For example, for Melissa and I, we came into our relationship understanding that we both had children previous and agreed that until they graduated high school, the kids needs would always come first. We knew and understood that once the kids were adults, we would have plenty of time to refocus on one another, which we have!
One of the best ways we’ve found to ensure your always together is to take some time each year to define together what your goals are. You should ways have short term, medium term and long term goals. Short term is generally your goals for the coming year. This is NOT New Years resolutions, but goals you are going work towards together during the year. Then, work on your five year plan. What do you want to have accomplished at the end of five years together? And finally, do a long term (beyond 10 years) of where you see yourselves. Each year you go through this exercise, things can certainly change based on events that occur each year. It’s also important not to fret too much if you miss one of your goals. There are so many factors that go into so many things. Readjust and move on. But, most importantly, make sure you and your partner agree on your goals. Working together on setting your goals and then working together to reach them brings you closer together and makes you love each other even more!
DISCLAIMER: Neither Melissa or Kurt are trained therapists or marriage counselors. We are simply sharing our thoughts on what has worked for us over our 10 years of marriage and enabled us to be more in love today than the day we got married. We also learned a lot from previous unsuccessful marriages and are sharing some of those lessons.
